The Cursed Curry

On Friday night, Mr Grumpy and I ordered a curry from a takeaway we have used scores of times before. The food, never too spicy, has always agreed with me and I have felt fine the following day. Yes, I know doctors advise people with stomach ulcers to avoid curry like the plague but, as I said, this particular restaurant has always gone easy on the chilli.

Until Friday, that is. Our curries arrived. Mr G's was a Balti Chicken while mine was a Peshwari King Prawn. I arranged my plateful on a tray and took it to the sofa so I could watch telly, while G ate in the kitchen. Before long, I heard loud splutterings and curses. Oh dear, thought I smugly. His is hot but mine will be fine. Wrong! The first prawn landed on my tongue and I mouthed it cautiously. It seemed OK until, SHAZZAM! The chilli kicked in and suddenly my whole mouth had turned into a fire pit. I felt like the ad for Gaviscon. Oh, how I needed those little firemen to hose my throat down with cooling liquid. Of course, I had swallowed the damn thing by now.

I stared thoughtfully at my plate. This curry had cost £8.99 and Mr G had cooked the rice himself. Add the cost of a poppadum and the aloo gobi side dish and there was over a tenner's worth sitting there. Was I about to throw a tenner into the garden for the fox? No. Instead, I made for the yogurt in the fridge, only to discover that there was no plain yog and the choice was between Vanilla or Coconut flavour.

I opted for the Vanilla. Nasty. I slathered it all in mango chutney, heaped rice around the prawn and took another mouthful. That was enough to persuade me that the fox was going to get a very expensive free dinner. Two, in fact, as Mr G had just thrown his Balti onto the lawn, where he witnessed Olive, the semi tame fox, take a mouthful, shake her head violently and spit it out again. She had the right idea. I now have a hideously painful interior at which I have thrown, over the past 36 hours, Omeprazole, Gaviscon and bicabonate of soda.

Talking of throwing money out into the garden, £1,300 of mine is rotting in the front garden, in the form of a rusty, mossy van that doesn't go. But that's another story.